Alger Hiss was another beneficiary of willful neglect of the obvious. His secret collaboration with Soviet Intelligence was known to Western authorities long before he moved up to play a substantive role in conferences where America’s posture toward the Soviet regime was being worked out, and more than a decade before he was finally brought down before a court… Why do we fall prey to hoaxes, deceptive tricks, lies, and misrepresentations that seem obvious to others less emotional or less involve? Why, once duped, do we then hang on to our misconception, sometimes against the evidence of our senses? Why, when supplied with that evidence, are we more likely to attack its suppliers — a Burtsev, Bukharin, Marton, Sneevliet, or Chambers — instead of the deceiver?> (pp. 272-273)

Second mention:

If American are not alone in suffering this form of blindess, they are particularly predisposed to it. Whittaker Chambers wrote of that “invincible ignorance, rooted in what was most generous in the American character, which because it was incapable of such conspiracy itself, cold not believe that others practiced it. It was rooted, too, in what was most singular i the American experience, which because it has prospered so much apart from the rest of the world, could not really grasp… why [Communists] acted as they did.” (p. 274)

About

"Whittaker Chambers in Books" reviews books with Whittaker Chambers tagged either as Subject, Actor, or Mention, focusing on most recently published books and working back historically to the Hiss-Chambers Case (1948-1950).